


be a part of the love club

by roseisreturning



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Music, F/F, Fake/Pretend Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-03
Updated: 2015-01-03
Packaged: 2018-03-04 18:59:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3083579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roseisreturning/pseuds/roseisreturning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>you've got that james dean daydream look in your eye and she's got that red lip classic thing that you like // the voice au, also known as that time i wrote about cophine in a singing competition while listening to a lot of taylor swift.</p>
            </blockquote>





	be a part of the love club

**Author's Note:**

> this has been an unreasonably long time coming so hopefully it doesn't disappoint! it was very cool and kinda silly writing it so i hope you have fun with it! i will probably revisit this au at some point because it's just a really fun universe to work in, so!! basically what i'm saying here is that this is a totally ridiculous fic that also has a very special place in my heart and if i'm lucky its ridiculousness will make you love it somewhat also?  
> listen to the soundtrack on 8tracks: http://8tracks.com/billiepiperly/the-voice-au

The first round of auditions is a capella. You feel empty without your guitar in your hands, your fingers too long and your breaths too short. The producer is watching you with an intense kind of warmth, a focused kind that makes you feel like nothing is more important than being everything she seems to think you are.

You understand that this is not the case, that the universe is ever-expanding at an ever-increasing rate and that this is the best day of countless people’s lives. Still, your hands—longing to be holding your guitar—are shaking like all of this will end if you do not ace this audition.

You busy your hands with four steady beats on the side of your leg, then—

_I guess you’d say, what can make me feel this way…_

When you finish the song (or at least, the two verses you are all allowed), you make your way back to the group. You’re more critical, now, of the way the producer watches the others. She only takes notes for a girl who looks like she’s just met the age requirement. You do your best to keep yourself from feeling guilty hoping you get the spot.

You do.

Nobody cries—not the girl and not the man who drove twelve hours to get here and not even you.

But ten minutes after you tweet that you’ve made it to callbacks, you have six replies with variations upon this exact sentiment.

Two days later, you are singing a series of pop songs to fairly unflattering karaoke mixes.

When you make it through this, you are essentially trapped in a room full of families sitting on square couches and wishing everyone good luck.

And you are alone.

You consider talking to the only other contestant in this situation, a tallish girl with nice hair who keeps running her fingers along the edge of her seat, but Felix joins her for an interview just as you start feeling brave enough to do it.

Just as he’s wrapping up, your makeup artist (which, holy _shit_ , you have a makeup artist) compliments your eyeliner at the same time she is taking it off.

She reapplies it in the same way it had been, but blacker, somehow, and surrounded by more foundation than you’ve worn since your awkward, unsure-of-how-makeup-works phase.

Still, when you walk out to the stage, you feel strangely like _yourself._

_Sweet pea, apple of my eye..._

It’s strange, not making eye contact. You’re used to the fixed mic, maybe too used to it, but audiences in coffee shops only sometimes have their backs turned. With this—

You’re through. Tony turns, the row of lights before him turning a bluish white that makes you want to stop singing then and there and _possibly_ hug him.

_Sweet pea, keeper of my soul…_

Two more chairs.

It’s almost like you’ve got talent beyond knowing how the make the breaks in your voice sound like they belong.

Rachel is the only one who doesn’t turn. She talks about control, about separating yourself from the song a little, about becoming more of a _character_ on stage, less of yourself.

Tony cuts in immediately, saying the opposite, then the other coaches, too, until Rachel—in the cold voice that made her famous—asks you to choose your coach.

“Oh my god,” you say, hands covering your face in a way that probably does not scream professionalism. “Uh, Tony!”

“Cosima Niehaus,” Felix says, with just enough excitement that you forget he says the constantly, “Team Tony.”

“Man,” you say, “I hadn’t even realized it was alliterative.” You don’t think anyone can hear you over the applause.

Tony pairs you with a four-chair for the battles. _Delphine_.

She meets you for coffee the next day. _We should get to know each other,_ her text says. _Is three o’clock okay?_

You agree, and at 3:07, you are running from your bus to the designated Starbucks, hoping that four-chair won’t hate you.

“Sorry,” you say as she’s waving you over. “I, uh, I’m really not an L.A. person.”

“But here you are,” she says.

“Yeah. Here I am.”

“You… Were you also, um… on day two?”

“Yeah,” you say. “Uh, I was, like, that dork without anyone there. I, uh, didn’t wanna freak my parents out. I was gonna talk to you, but…”

“It’s good you didn’t,” she says. “It’s, um… dangerous to get too close to the competition.”

“Mm. Close enough for coffee, though.”

She smiles, and you try to think about something else.

You don’t practice together until you’re with Tony. This is all part of the illusion.

Delphine gets _close_ when she sings with you, as close as your mics allow, the kind of close that makes you feel like you can’t breathe. But this is all part of the competition, and you’ve spent years learning to breathe. The next time she does this, you grin and brush your hand against hers for just long enough that it looks like it’s part of the act.

She almost forgets to come in at the right time.

“Damn,” Tony says, and you would be lying if you said he hadn’t surprised you. “Is there something you’re not telling me?”

Delphine laughs and looks at the ground and rushes into a question about a harmony.

On the day of the battles, you’re both wearing black. Delphine takes a selfie of you in the mirror and sends it out through Snapchat: _#funeralselfie._

Just as it times out, you’re being called to the stage and Felix is saying your names and you’re singing, and she is, and you are on opposite sides of the stage until you’re not.

_The only heaven I'll be sent to is when I'm alone with you._

Delphine, you think, spends more time looking at you than she does at the audience. Secretly, you hope she gets called out on it. (Secretly, you think it’s hypnotizing. Secretly, you feel like you should be in love with her for these four minutes. For honesty’s sake.)

She doesn’t but you do and you are and none of the judges but Rachel tell Tony who to choose. They are all too busy talking about your chemistry as Delphine squeezes your hand.

(Later, when the episode airs, you will play a drinking game and livetweet the performances. Now, you feel like you could die.)

Tony picks Delphine, and the moment he says it, she turns and hugs you. You try not to think about it meaning _goodbye._

You’re already walking offstage when Alison hits her button.

Delphine is already gone by then, but she tells you later that she had heard from backstage. “I was rooting for you,” she says, and her face is close and her hands are soft and you wish you could believe her.

She is leaning against the wall and looking overall exhausted when she smiles at you at the end of the night. “We should, um, go out sometime. As friends? Or something, um… Something that’s not competition, you know?”

“Yeah,” you say, “for sure.”

At your first rehearsal, Alison tells you she appreciates your openness, and you think this is her way of telling you to tone it down a little.

You find out maybe two minutes before you go on that you’re up against another four-chair, maybe the best in the competition, and you can’t help but feel like Alison’s trying to get rid of you. (“It’s not like it was a big deal or anything,” you tell Delphine in the aftermath, “but it kind of was.” Delphine laughs.)

_Sun-kissed skin on my lips…_

(You lose. Tony steals you. People clap, and you can see him tweeting something, and, backstage, Delphine hugs you.)

They get you a stylist that week, bring all of you into some NBC affiliate filled with conspicuous product placement—Starbucks cups with water in them and signs for department stores that don’t actually carry the clothes on the racks. Delphine is handed another Starbucks cup, and almost immediately after, she leans into you and raises the lid. It’s empty, and it takes everything in you not to laugh.

The stylists—there are two of them, small women with impeccable hair and bright lipstick—introduce themselves quickly but warmly, like the producer at your first audition. And then they set you loose.

Eventually, one of them—Michelle, who reminds you vaguely of your mom—comes to you, frazzled and slightly horrified by your current selections, but still smiling.

Delphine waves at you from the other end of the room, then cringes. When you turn back to Michelle, she’s holding a pair of black sequined pants and beaming.

You smile. “Great!”

On the first night of the live shows, you get eighteen texts and five Snapchats from Delphine wishing you good luck.

 _do i really need it that bad?_ you reply the next time your phone goes off, but the second you have on those awful sequined pants, you Snapchat her twelve times in a period of two minutes.

Then, after eight more Snapchats and three more good luck texts, you’re onstage.

Delphine is smiling. You can’t tell if she’s doing it for you or for the cameras, but it makes you feel lighter, somehow. You make your way across the stage with so much confidence that even Rachel will talk about it.

_My baby don’t mess around because she loves me so and this I know for sure._

Tony had talked to you about making the song into something slower, softer. This was the first time you ignored his advice, and you think, if you weren’t _a performer_ now, your hands would be shaking.

Delphine, as trained as she is, is doing this for you. You try not to pay attention to this, try to zero in on engaging the rest of the audience, but she relays it to you in the morning with enough detail that it doesn’t matter.

Still, she smiles when you hit _that line_ , sounding maybe more bitter than you had planned.

 _Separate’s always better when there’s feelings involved_.

Rachel comments on this, on the smirk and the look and the laugh between breaths, and you wonder if she knows it’s not for the art.

You can feel the cameras on you again, that second day, feel the music pounding in your chest and the smile on your face, but all you can focus on is Delphine—her voice and her hair and, oh _god,_ her hips. And you think, if you died in this moment, you would _definitely_ be going to hell.

_Cosima, I was enchanted to meet you._

The audience freaks. You freak. You watch the coaches on their phones, watch the way Delphine backs up from the mic and laughs when the music gives her the chance. She’s composed when she starts singing again, voice clear, eyes fixed on the audience.

You forget that this is _live,_ that people are _tweeting_ about this and _talking_ about this, and that your mom will probably be calling you tomorrow to ask if you have a girlfriend. Delphine is _mesmerizing,_ the way she hits every note with an impossible kind of precision, sings with her whole body, sings to _everyone—_ though some more than others, you think, and feel a terrible satisfaction in it.

Felix takes longer than usual to silence the crowd.

You don’t catch much of what the coaches say, but Delphine laughs a lot, light and nervous, and it keeps you just distracted enough to stop hearing your own name in your head.

You don’t see each other for the rest of the night, but you wake up to an unopened text: _I hope it wasn’t too much._

_nah, we’re good. it was smart._

_Smart?_

_if you don’t get votes after that, i don’t know what will._

She doesn’t reply. Instead, six hours later, she asks, _Movie night?_

If you were less crushy or more bitter, you would probably be able to contain yourself, but you are neither of those things, so you reply with as many exclamation points as your thumbs can manage in a quarter of a second. _YES!!!!!!!!_

_See you at seven?_ _J_

_yeah_

_Can’t wait!_

You split a tub of ice cream, chocolate chip, and Delphine compares you to the couple onscreen. “That should be our angle,” you say.

Delphine laughs. “I think it already is,” she says, and you think you like it.

She sends you a voice memo the day you work with your coaches.

_Now I've got you in my space, I won’t let go of you._

Your first kiss is as off-camera as it gets.

It’s still there, still in L.A., maybe a block away in an all-hours coffee shop they like to film the in-between parts of your stories.

You want to tell yourself that this makes it more real, that maybe Delphine was only pretending in the same way you were, but three seconds later, you are smiling and she won’t meet your eyes.

“I had to be sure,” she says, and for a second you think it means something. You think she realizes this, because it takes her longer than it should to continue. “I mean, um… That it would be okay, you know, on camera. Beforehand.”

“So, uh, you thought you would just… go for it?”

“I’m sorry.”

You laugh, because you don’t think you have another option. “No, hey, uh, whatever, right? It’s cool. We both wanna win. I’m… Uh, kissing you isn’t the worst way to do it.”

“Okay,” she says. “So, we are… together?”

“Uh, yeah,” you say, and hate yourself for smiling. “Fictitiously.”

Delphine smiles, too. Her lipstick is as bright as ever. “Of course,” she says. She is already typing her passcode into her phone.

Your second kiss goes directly to Instagram.

Felix asks you about it, at the live eliminations. Delphine has already been saved. You know that it makes you selfish and needy and desperate, but you wish she was still next to you. All you have now is the series of prepared answers you and Delphine had gone over last night.

Still, you feel almost breathless when you say it.

Felix tells you you’re safe less than a minute later.

All you can think about is how stupid you’ll feel the day he doesn’t. _(What would her Instagram look like then?)_

On what is supposedly the last free night you’ll have in weeks, you host a livestream in pajama pants and one of Delphine’s worn-out band t-shirts.

A fan tweets you about it, fifteen minutes in. Delphine, who is lying on your bed, laughs loudly enough that even your shitty webcam mic picks it up.

You’re blushing, you know, because Delphine laughs again, and says, “It’s what you get!”

On Twitter, six people declare you to be “perfect for each other.” You spend the rest of the livestream trying not to laugh about it. Five minutes following this incident, Delphine leans into you and asks if you’d like her to call for takeout. You say you would, and, once she leaves, the livestream gets _intense._

As a semiprofessional dork, you’ve always been _aware_ of fanfiction, but the second Delphine is gone, you get a link to the very first one starring yourself.

“Dude,” you say to the camera, “I just got this link to a fanfic about, like, _us._ It’s called, oh my god, it’s called ‘Take Me to Church,’ which is probably what _you_ should be saying because this shit is raunchy as fuck, oh my god. I’m—uh, I’m trying to keep this PG-13, but I’m totally showing this to Delphine. Wait, is that cool? Is the author on here right now? Is that cool?”

You refresh Twitter. More questions, more questions, more textual screaming, and an _answer._ “Okay,” you say. “Uh, the author—that’s, okay, that’s @mayyygen, that’s… three ‘y’s… They say it’s cool, so, like, it’s happening, guys. I’m doing it. So… Uh, moving on, we have a question from @jenna_l, that’s Jenna-underscore-L. And Jenna’s asking what my favorite performance has been so far.”

You answer this, answer three more questions before Delphine comes back. You try to make it obvious that you’re still livestreaming, and she must catch on, because the moment she reaches you, she kisses you, which is a Strictly-for-Publicity activity. (“Unless you are particularly lonely,” she told you. “It’s always good to practice.”)

Delphine kneels down to look into the camera. “We have to eat,” she says, “but thank you!”

You wave, say goodbye, and end the livestream.

Delphine teases you about the fanfiction every chance she has until she gets caught.

When she does, you are maybe three minutes from being onstage, makeup still being perfected, Delphine reciting an especially colorful line when Paul, who has been giving Cal almost aggressive words of encouragement, laughs.

You’re called onstage before Delphine has a chance to defend herself.

_For you, there'll be no more crying…_

Every time you look at her, Delphine’s eyes are fixed on the audience, and the coaches call it a moving performance.

(She tells you later that she had been trying not to laugh, and you decide to say you’d been trying to make her. After all, you tell yourself, your lying needs the practice.)

You have a break around midnight, one night—between this full-cast press thing and your recording slot—at the same time as Delphine, and everyone who comes within a mile radius of you tells you to use it for sleep. You don’t. You don’t even think you can _remember_ how to sleep, and Delphine has had too much coffee to bother trying.

“I think,” she tells you, voice slow and soft and breaking, “that this, um—this headache, it’s improving my rhythm.”

“Yeah?”

“Mhm. It’s—“ She laughs. “It’s like, when people say they have this internal beat… That’s what it is. But… more painful.”

“Mm, yeah. Uh, do you wanna, uh… Do you wanna film? I haven’t made a public video in, like, eighty years. We were talking about that ‘Riptide’ arrangement, right? I have my guitar…”

“Do you have the words? I’ve had… too much to memorize.”

“Yeah, yeah. We can just prop the camera on the case, and… Okay. I can, uh, if you wanna look at the music—“ You pull it from your bag, which you had previously been using as a kind of pillow. “And you’re, uh, probably better on the second, if that’s cool?”

She nods and takes the music from you. Her nail polish is chipping. You wonder if she’ll have time to get them done again before her filmed rehearsal time.

It takes her maybe ten minutes to go through the song, minutes spent with your head resting on her shoulder and listening to the notes she hums against your ear and beats tapped on her leg until she says, “Do you want to give it a try?”

“Yeah,” you say, reaching for your guitar. “I’m ready when you are.”

“Ready.”

You only go through the first minute before you set up your camera, but you realize, in this time, how _weightless_ you feel singing with her, in a way that has nothing to do with exhaustion.

It’s different when you start filming. Her timing is better, voice smoother, hair let free from the two-days-older-than-it-should-be bun. And you know that she’s acting—that you’re both acting, or at least that you should be—but _god_ the way she’s looking at you makes you wish you weren’t.

_I love you when you're singing that song._

(Two days later, Delphine describes her performances as magnifying the little truths. You think about this every time she looks at you with cameras rolling.)

Being onstage with Delphine is more rehearsed now, the nestling of heads into shoulders and arms twisted together and the bumping of hips at particular lines.

And you don’t think you’ve ever been happier.

She loves this song, she tells you, insists that she’s stopped taking herself so seriously, but you warn her before you flirt, even now. She thanks you for it when you’re alone.

_I can’t think straight, I’m so gay._

Delphine laughs, like she wasn’t expecting it, and the audience joins her as Paul takes up the next line.

You’re in the bottom three that night, and you think this is the one thing that gets your votes in. Delphine insists it was her Twitter fraud.

You laugh. “Obvs. Gotta keep the weak ones in, right?”

“Mmm. You won’t tell?”

“Nah,” you say. “You gotta carry me through this, man. I’m not giving up my only shot at a win.”

Delphine never warns you when she goes to hold your hand. You’re never sure if you should thank her for it.

(You don’t. These are the kinds of things that make girls look desperate.)

You try going back to your hotel in the middle of the day once, after the bottom three and the strategizing, and tell yourself to sleep.

And you do. You fall asleep at two in the afternoon and wake up just under three hours later, convinced you’ve missed half your life. And in this, you call Delphine.

“Hey,” you say, and your voice sounds so _god-awful_ that you start to think this is why they don’t give you time to sleep.

“Hey.” (Delphine’s voice is still Delphine’s voice, and you want to compare it to a thousand beautiful things before you remember you are not actually in love.)

“I’m, uh, exceptionallylonely,” you say, which is embarrassing and not part of the plan, but Delphine laughs.

Within fifteen minutes, you are half-watching a _Parks and Rec_ rerun and wondering whether soft-makeout is within the acceptable range of closeness. (Logically, no, but Delphine laughs when you bring it up. “Quiet,” she says. “I’m getting into character.”)

They give you three days in San Francisco, and it’s almost stopped feeling like home.

You’ve started to like L.A., the fucked-up public transportation and the way everyone is an even shittier driver than you and the way you’re never actually sure if you’re accidentally on the set of something. (And Delphine, of course, and the way you walk constantly, probably obnoxiously, hand in hand.)

You’re excited, still, excited to be playing in venues you couldn’t even afford to get _into_ last year and excited to be seeing your family, but it’s weird in a way you can’t explain to the cameras or your parents or to anyone but Delphine.

Delphine, in New York, who sends you daily Snapchats with the _Manhattan_ filter, pulling faces with her brother. She captions the first _my substitute loser,_ cat-eye glasses doodled in, but calls you the next night (midnight, for her) asking if it’s as strange for you as it is for her.

“I’m looking at a calendar from, like, six years ago,” you say. “It’s weird.”

“Okay,” she says, then gets quiet until you’re not sure if you should hang up. Her brother says something in French, and she groans. “Sorry. He needs his sleep.”

“Still listening?” you ask, because Delphine’s brother, like your parents, is too sweet to be told the truth.

“Yeah,” she says, and you feel better, somehow.

“Love you.”

Delphine hums, quiet and content (almost amused), and it makes you wish you didn’t mean it. “Love you,” she says.

You wear her t-shirt and a pretty skirt to your radio appearance and end up caught in a conversation about a band you just barely know. It takes you three and a half minutes to confess that the shirt is borrowed, and four to admit that it belongs to Delphine. You transition carefully back into music and hope that this is the part they use. (You have realized you are tied to her forever now, and you don’t know if you feel more giddy or scared.)

Delphine takes a selfie on her way back to L.A. wearing your old college sweatshirt. It’s angled perfectly, gold writing just barely cut off— _CALIFORN._ Within minutes, her followers realize it’s yours.

You swap back the day after your return and spend the rest of your free time practicing. You’re the only two left on Tony’s team now, after Cal was voted out, and perform together constantly. You have a love song this time, or something like one, just you and Delphine, and she will stop at random points to throw out ideas on movement. (Music is an instinct, for both of you, and these changes are automatic. But you are careless with your hands and Delphine knows it.)

_Swore I'd never fall in love again, but I fell hard._

“We should keep still here.” She’s leaning into you, and you know that even she can’t sing for shit with that posture, but it feels _nice_. (It feels so nice, you have to remind yourself that no one’s filming.)

It’s your idea to create a kind of barrier between you, your first performance in reverse. Delphine loves it.

After your rehearsal time, the two of you are scheduled to film some exclusive for the NBC site, which is guaranteed to be at least somewhat scripted and entirely cheesy. She spends more time gushing to a producer about your gameplan than she does on her part.

“Anyway,” she says, when she’s gone through the choreography around twice, “were we going to be doing this together?”

(You are. You always are, and you always lean on Delphine’s shoulder until you lose your balance and almost fall, which always makes it into the final cut.)

This time, when it happens, Delphine is insisting that the real romance of the show is between Cal and Paul and your left leg has kind of fallen asleep and, honestly, it’s not at all your fault, because these heels are really not made for any kind of movement whatsoever.

You take them off immediately after the incident, and find yourself around six foot shorter than Delphine, who, apparently unaffected by this, is now talking about the most famous of the Cal/Paul pranks. (This, not terribly coincidentally, was another site exclusive.)

This is all they need from you. A block away, Delphine says she won’t be able to see you until your next rehearsal.

You think this is when you know she’s going to win.

Mark comes in third.

Delphine is so close that you can feel her dress scratching your legs and her fingernails digging into your hand and there is a part of you before Felix says her name that wishes you could stay this way.

“Hey,” you say, just quiet enough that you’re not sure she’ll hear you over the audience, “competition’s over.”

She’s smiling, and you don’t know if it’s because she’s _won_ or because she won’t have to see you again for weeks or some combination of the two, but she kisses you (quick, soft), and you think, maybe, she didn’t hear you. And it’s actually kind of okay.


End file.
